


Honour vs. Home

by SilentAuror



Series: The End of Illusions [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, HLV fix-it, Happy Ending, His Last Vow, M/M, Marriage breakdown, POV John Watson, Unrequited Love, companion piece to Stand-in, ridiculous amounts of inner monologue and backstory, series 3 fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-02-07 06:14:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1887945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentAuror/pseuds/SilentAuror
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Companion piece to <i>Stand-in</i>, could be considered a sequel. John has to make the difficult decision between what he wants and what he knows he has to do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honour vs. Home

**Honour vs. Home**

 

He knew he had to go back. 

Five months was too long. Four months was too long. Even two months was too long. Sherlock told him cryptically that if he was going to do it, forgive Mary, he’d best do it before she changed her mind about taking him back, adding a further twist of the knife that he’d be better off and safer if he stayed with Mary. 

It hurt, Sherlock encouraging him to go. Not that he’d said it with all that much enthusiasm. He’d said it completely neutrally, delivered without emotion of any sort, eyes on the newspaper in front of him. As though they were discussing the weather, only Sherlock never discusses the weather and besides which, he’d been holding himself just a little too rigidly for John to be able to swallow that he had no strong feelings on the topic at all. He did care. But he was still sending John back. 

He didn’t want to go. 

He’d known, well before Sherlock jumped, well before Irene came into their lives, that he was massively attracted to Sherlock. He hadn’t realised until Irene that he was also in love. He’d never been so strongly attracted to a bloke before. There’d been passing hints, wisps of interest, but never anything he would have pursued. But Irene had forced him to see it, hadn’t she. With her amused eyes and _I-like-him-too-and-I-intend-to-take-him-from-you_ face. He’d hated that. Resented it fiercely. And never for a moment thought he’d be able to compete, so he hadn’t tried. Instead he’d sulked, he’d been passive-aggressive ( _“Fifty-seven of those texts, at least that I’ve heard”_ ), and he’d finally left the house to leave them alone together. Yet somehow he strongly suspected it had never happened, despite that, and anyway she’d never appeared again since then, so clearly it wasn’t anything that meant anything to either of them. He’d asked Sherlock once, months later, why he’d kept the phone. Sherlock had said something vague about liking one of the text messages, and John, feeling sick with jealousy and not wanting to know, hadn’t pursued it. 

And then Sherlock had jumped. In the weeks and months that followed, a terrifyingly dark mass of lifetime where all the days and nights ran together and he’d felt like he was going half out of his mind, John had gone through that final phone call over and over and over again, thinking of things that he could have said. Ways he could have prevented it from happening. Things he could have said instead of his useless denials – _no, you’re not really doing this, I don’t believe it, stop this now_. What if he’d said, instead, _You know that I believe you, believe in you. You know that I’ll stand by you no matter what the newspapers say. If you need to leave London, I’ll go with you. I’ll never abandon you and I don’t believe for a second that you’re a fake. Why are you doing this? Are you trying to protect me? What’s going on? I love you. Don’t leave me._ But he hadn’t said any of that, and Sherlock had jumped. 

And he’d met Mary. He’d liked her. He’d liked her very much, indeed. But he’d never tried to pretend that she could take Sherlock’s place in any way, that building something with her could ever make up for what had never happened between him and Sherlock. But Mary was funny and sweet and kind, or so he’d thought at the time. She was good at cajoling him out of his bad moods, cheering him up when the ragged hole left in his very soul was gnawing at him. A good distraction. It’s not fair to think of her that way – but she _was_. He loved her. He did. He liked her company very much, even if they didn’t like the same sorts of jokes. He liked being with her. It was gentle, nothing earth-shattering. Once or twice he’d been in one of his dark moods when she’d tried to distract him with sex, and thinking of Sherlock while he was lying next to Mary just didn’t work, even after a year and a half. The cognitive dissonance was too great. She knew all about Sherlock, of course, but not that. Never that. It wasn’t a secret to John, but Mary never needed to know. He could have done that: married Mary, made for that port in the storm of his grief, of the hollowness left behind. 

And then Sherlock had come back. In front of Mary, he’d chosen to stage his ridiculous return. John still wants to punch him at the memory of it, though in retrospect he’d realised that Sherlock was nervous, himself, at the time. Had been trying to use their typical, shared humour to break the ice. John had nearly broken his face instead, and the salt in the wound was that he couldn’t say any of the things he might have wanted to say upon finding out that Sherlock was living – not with Mary there, and he’d been in the middle of fumbling badly through a proposal he was only ninety percent sure he wanted to go through with; he couldn’t have asked her to leave. (She could have given them a moment or two, surely, but all night wouldn’t have been long enough for all the talking he and Sherlock would have had to do.) It had been like two realities crashing together. 

Over the next six months of wedding planning and crime solving with Sherlock again, John had lived in a state of constant wariness and slight confusion. It was wonderful that Sherlock and Mary had taken to each other so easily; normally Sherlock was always such a prick to his girlfriends. He’d hoped it was jealousy. Was Sherlock not jealous any more, then? Did John even want him to be? Everything was simpler this way: Sherlock had never shown any particular sign that he would have responded positively had John tried to initiate something between them, anyway, so what would be the point in throwing away a perfectly good thing with Mary for someone who didn’t want him that way, anyway? He knew – has always known – that he’s immensely important to Sherlock, but Sherlock doesn’t really do any of the normal human relationship things the way other people do. He’d said from the first that he wasn’t interested. 

So: he’d married Mary. As he’d asked her to. Although he’d never really asked, had he. Mary had been waiting when he’d got home the night of the fifth of November, and after he’d recounted everything with the bomb and she’d said all the right things in response, she’d looked him in the eye and said, “So, I expect you have something to give me.”

John had been confused. “What? What do you mean?” 

Mary had raised her eyebrows, smiling hardening a little, though it was still playful on the surface, and held up her bare left hand, fingers waggling. “You were in the middle of trying to ask me something the other night. The answer is yes, of course, but usually that question comes with a certain piece of jewellery.”

“Oh!” John had clued in, then, feeling strangely deflated. He’d never even managed to articulate the actual question. Oh, well – too late, now. She’d already said yes. He’d gone to get the ring from suit jacket from the other night and took it over and opened it in front of her. She’d smiled and taken it from him and put it on, and that settled that. 

It should have been simple enough. Easy enough. He had a fiancée and got his best friend back from the dead, only everything he’d felt hadn’t died. But he was learning to figure out how to channel everything into its proper place so that he could juggle it, make the balance work. He and Sherlock would solve a case, cheeks flushed with laughter and triumph, and they’d be walking to get a taxi, probably still half out of breath, Sherlock recounting the finer details of the case to him, and John would be exhilarated and happier than he’d been in years. And fiercely aroused, wanting Sherlock so badly he was afraid to touch him or even look at him fully lest he lose control of his urge to just back him into the nearest wall and kiss him. And occasionally, he thought – though it was probably just wishful thinking – he thought he saw a glimmer of something similar in those impossible eyes. 

“Dinner?” Sherlock would say then, voice carefully measured, eyeing John almost warily, and John would have to make an excuse, because if he stayed and ate with Sherlock, even somewhere public, he was afraid of how intimate it could become, how the post-adrenaline rush could settle into low warmth in his belly, the candlelight flickering between them, and the wrong things would be said. Someone would finally reach out and the first touch would set off an avalanche. So: no. 

“I should, er, get home,” John would say apologetically, and Sherlock never argued, never said, _Come on, John; Mary won’t mind. Just come out for dinner to celebrate the case. I’ll make sure you get home at a reasonable time. For me._ But he didn’t, and John would go home, keyed up and sometimes already hard in his trousers, and everything that he couldn’t do with Sherlock, he would pour into Mary instead, attacking her in the sitting room or kitchen or bedroom, getting her clothes out of the way and pounding into her, his hands wild. He didn’t consciously think of Sherlock – he was always careful not to. He enjoyed the feeling of Mary’s breasts in his hands, if not the sounds she would make. But he liked being inside her, though on those occasions it was always much more about the fierce need to fuck something, rut against something, just spend his desire as quickly as possible before it came out the wrong way. She was his fiancée; she was supposed to be the one on the receiving end of his ardour. He was doing the right thing, and she was benefiting from it, at least. He knew that Mary had noticed the difference in his sexual appetite, but she’d never complained. She liked it, never asked what had got into him, and it worked as a way of getting rid of what he wasn’t allowed to be feeling for Sherlock, so in a way, it almost worked. He was getting away with the secret feelings he was required to suppress, and Mary was happier than ever with him in bed. She would encourage him to go off on a case just so that he would come home in that mood. It had been working. 

But it wore on him. He could feel it, always there. There were moments when he came so very close to the line. His own stag night had left him with a wash of embarrassment when he woke up. Sherlock had been well and truly sloshed, but John didn’t want to rely on his horribly acute perceptions and observations having been drowned out in his state. They never made mention of it again until Sherlock brought it up a week and a half later in his wedding speech. The one where he said that – like Mary, he’d said, disguising it safely that way – that he was one of the two people in the world who loved John the most, the other being John’s brand new wife. That had struck John painfully right in the heart and he’d nearly cried in front of all the wedding guests. Between that and Sherlock’s reaction to John having said – as platonically as possible, of course; he’d been very careful about that, and besides, when one is marrying a woman, people stop suspecting as much – what he’d said, he was sure by then that Sherlock really did feel something. He’d seen it plainly on his face later, after Sherlock’s over-the-top vow. Seen the realisation of what John’s unexpected and impending fatherhood would do to their already-compromised friendship. John could see it, himself, as plain as day: Sherlock texting him as two in the morning about a murder and not being able to go off and leave Mary alone with the baby, or being stuck with the baby while Mary was out with friends, or down the road, having to take the kids to after school activities and getting a minivan and comparing notes with all the other kids’ dads and everything he’d ever had with Sherlock getting sidelined. He’d seen it on Sherlock’s face, too: that Sherlock was seeing the very same future, seeing clearly that John, who had been managing to divide his time pretty well when it was only between two adults, was now going to be kept firmly on one side of the balance from there on in. Mary had won the unspoken battle for territory, not that John thought she’d got pregnant on purpose. 

And then Sherlock had left, and without him John had grown irritable and angry and unhappy. As though they were fighting, but he couldn’t even talk about it with Mary the way he had when he’d thought Sherlock was dead. It was awful. He’d already started thinking that if the rest of his life was going to be like that, he’d go crazy. He’d taken to dreaming about Sherlock ever since he’d come back. The dreams were always different – they’d be running, they’d be running and shooting over their shoulders, or only John would be shooting, or Sherlock would be delivering a rapid-fire deduction while John gaped at him. It didn’t matter what he dreamed; he always woke up hard, a fist already jerking over himself under the blankets. The dreams shifted a little, the further they got into wedding planning. Two nights after he’d asked Sherlock to be his best man, his entire dream was nothing but Sherlock staring at him as though every thought in his head had frozen, eyes blinking and uncomprehending as John, in his dream, sat on one of the kitchen chairs at Baker Street and masturbated in front of him. He’d woken up only after he’d come in the dream, his hands wet and sticky, Mary _tsk_ -ing beside him in slight disgust but not reproaching him. Sherlock never touched him in the dreams, but once he’d deduced John as John had touched himself, commenting on everything about John except for the fact that John was naked from the waist down and enthusiastically wanking in plain daylight. He couldn’t help the dreams. He could only be grateful that he hadn’t had one the night of the stag night in the prison cell with Sherlock. He’d insisted that Sherlock take the bench, half-hoping to stay awake if he sat up for the remainder of the night. 

And then everything had changed the morning he’d found both Isaac Whitney and Sherlock in that smack house. He’d been furious, devastated, and it wasn’t only about the relapse – he knew damned well that it was at least half about not having seen Sherlock in so long, as though Sherlock was going out of his way to prove that John’s marriage would guarantee the slow death of their friendship. It was terrible. And he’d hated that Mary had witnessed all of it. He hadn’t wanted to her come along at all. Crime scenes and danger were _his_ area, the thing he shared with Sherlock, even in Sherlock’s absence. He’d been a captain, damn it; he could handle himself. He remembered her snide remarks about the tyre lever, trying to apologise for it only after he’d got well and truly annoyed. 

And that night, she shot Sherlock. 

There have been multiple points in his past that John has considered the major landmarks and turning points. Graduating from med school. The one memory from Kandahar that he refused to think about, where he’d barely escaped with his life. Getting shot. Meeting Sherlock. But the night that Mary shot Sherlock stands out above them all, coupled inescapably with the night that Sherlock had called, his voice rasping with pain and apology both, and asked him to come and meet him in Leinster Gardens. _There’s something I have to show you,_ he’d said. And _I’m sorry, John. But you have to know._

He remembers his rage back at Baker Street. Mary, sullen and withdrawn; Sherlock too logical, too ready to feed lies into the situation to excuse Mary, to explain the inexplicable. It hadn’t worked; John hadn’t believed a word of it. And when Sherlock had collapsed again, John’s own heart had been in his mouth. After the paramedics had taken Sherlock down to the ambulance, he’d given Mary a look so dark he could barely see her through its haze. _Stay away from us_ , he’d said, then turned and pounded down the stairs after Sherlock. It was a nightmare. He’d spent the second of two sleepless nights in seven days watching the monitor beside Sherlock’s bed, Sherlock’s cool, motionless hand in both of his, willing him with every last bit of his strength to live. He’d cried and sworn at Sherlock and still not said any of the things that mattered. Just in case Sherlock heard. He couldn’t risk their friendship, couldn’t risk Sherlock hearing something he didn’t want to hear, sentiments that he didn’t feel and couldn’t return. Their friendship had enough problems at the moment. He swore to himself, watching Sherlock’s chest rise and fall under the sterile hospital sheet, Sherlock’s limp fingers in his, that it would be enough just to have Sherlock alive. Just to know that he was existing and doing his crime thing and moderately happy. That would be enough. John could live without having everything he wanted from Sherlock in terms of his own feelings and poorly-suppressed desires, if Sherlock would only make it through the night. He could live with just friendship. Sherlock’s friendship was worth more to him than anything else. It would be enough. 

He was bargaining with the universe, he knew, but it worked; Sherlock survived the defibrillation and was moved to a private room with locked windows and a nurse/security guard stationed at his door. Since he’d already been shot once, John hadn’t protested the guard. Nor had he budged from Sherlock’s side until the day he was discharged. Meanwhile, Mary hadn’t even tried to contact him. He’d had no idea what she was thinking. He hadn’t even seen her until eight days later when he went to the flat to get some clean clothes. He’d chickened out and sent Mike Stamford with his key to pick up a few things the first time. The second time, Mary had been home. 

She’d looked up when he came in, her eyes round and accusing and somewhat reptilian, the way they had been at Baker Street. His stomach had tightened and he’d just ignored her and gone into the bedroom to collect some things. He’d been on the point of leaving again when her voice stopped him. “John.”

He hadn’t looked back over his shoulder. “What?” His voice was heavy and flat, unable to even frame it like a question. 

“I had to, you know.”

He’d shaken his head. “No. You didn’t.”

“Did you even listen to what Sherlock said? Even he understands – he told you, I saved his life.”

Mary was insistent. Unrepentant. Unapologetic. John’s brain chose that moment to recall Sherlock apologising to him on the phone for the fact that he was about to reveal Mary as she truly was to him. The wrong person had apologised. “You wouldn’t have needed to ‘save’ his life by calling an ambulance if you hadn’t shot him in the first place,” John said then, his voice harsh. 

“So – what, then, are you just going to sulk about it?” Mary asked, sounding frustrated. “I did what I had to do!”

John had stood where he was, shaking his head and unable to find something that made sense to say to this completely ridiculous statement. “No,” he’d said at last, and put his hand on the door knob. “You didn’t have to do that. There is no way that you _had_ to do that. I don’t want to talk to you about this. Or about anything.”

“Where are you going?” she’d demanded then. “We have to talk about this eventually – when are you coming back?”

He’d turned the knob. “I don’t know.” He’d gone then, closing the door firmly behind him. Sherlock had told him again, at the hospital, that it was important for his own safety that Mary believe him potentially willing to forgive her. But how was he to forgive her when she hadn’t asked for forgiveness in the first place? 

Once Sherlock was discharged, John had gone with him to Baker Street, unpacked his small collection of clothing and his laptop, and settled back in. He’d needed to be there for the first month or two; Sherlock was in no condition to be left on his own. Mary had texted him repeatedly, tried calling him a few times, and John responded to none of them. The texts grew increasingly frustrated. 

_Hello? John? Have you forgotten that_  
 _you’re actually married to me? You_  
 _going to come home some day?_

_Your mother called. I told her I haven’t_  
 _seen you in three weeks and that you_  
 _might have moved out but that I don’t_  
 _know because you haven’t spoken to me_  
 _even to tell me that. When are you coming_  
 _home? You can’t just ignore this forever._

_Sherlock must have recovered by now. I_  
 _have an ultrasound tomorrow. Are you_  
 _going to come? Text me back if you want_  
 _the details. This IS your child, you realise._

_John, stop being a coward and face the truth._  
 _You have the memory stick. Have you read it_  
 _yet? You can’t just bury your head in the sand._  
 _You married me. If you’re going to leave me,_  
 _then leave me already. But leave me knowing_  
 _the truth, at least._

And finally, not long before Christmas, _I love you. Please come home._

The only text he’d sent her was a stiff invitation for dinner at Sherlock’s parents’. By that point, John had spent five months living with and caring for Sherlock – a Sherlock who had lost his sharp edges as he was recovering, clearly grateful for John’s presence and very content to have him home again. And John had felt himself falling in love impossibly more deeply every day, even more so than before. It was gentle, like the tide pulling him ever further out to sea. He knew he was already in vastly too deep. He couldn’t ignore it or change it; the best he could hope for was to hide it, and he didn’t even know how well he was doing with that. There were moments everywhere, moments when John felt almost sure that it could have happened, but there were always two obstacles, and he wasn’t sure which even came first. One was that he didn’t know whether he was reading Sherlock correctly. He never knew that. He’d assumed, for instance, that Sherlock had known how important he was to John, how vital, how central – yet the shock on his face when John had asked him to be his best man, had said that Sherlock was one of the two people he loved most in all the world plainly said that he hadn’t considered himself anywhere near that important. And their friendship is vastly too important to John to make a mistake with this. He knows very well that he’d rather take a wonderful, deeply-grounded friendship with Sherlock and nothing more for the rest of his days than make an overture that wouldn’t be welcome and spoil everything forever. There are moments, though, sitting across from each other in their chairs where John was ninety-five percent certain that if he leaned across and quietly, carefully put his mouth on Sherlock’s, Sherlock wouldn’t have recoiled. Maybe the kiss would have begun a bit awkwardly – he knows Sherlock doesn’t have much experience with all that – but he’d have caught on quickly enough, a large hand wrapping around the back of John’s neck as he pressed in, his mouth growing stronger and more certain on John’s all the time. And maybe either he or John would slip out of his chair and into the other’s lap and it would all just happen, without needing hours of talk and explanations. Just naturally. But John had been too afraid of risking it to try, and Sherlock had never tried, either. So perhaps he didn’t want it, anyway. 

And secondly, he has a wife. Not only a wife, but a baby on the way. A daughter, if Mary’s texts are to be believed. It makes him feel sick, the reality of the baby. If it were only Mary, he’d ignore Sherlock’s advice about being safer with Mary and damn the risk. But the niggling guilt of the fact that she loves him, that he promised her his loyalty and love for the rest of his days, so help him God, does weigh on his conscience. No matter what she’s done, he made a promise. A commitment. And, God help him, there’s a child. If Mary were to leave him and take the child with her, fine. He’d do whatever he needed to do in terms of support, visiting, involvement, et cetera. But the thought of a child in his daily life is not something he’s ever particularly wanted. It was exciting, at least a bit, finding out, but then the reality had settled in. A child meant being strapped down to that month of domesticity without Sherlock after the honeymoon, only for life. It was a way to keep him attached to Mary inescapably forever. He cannot possibly just ditch on the kid. He’s not that sort of man. And being that sort of man will mean needing to go back to Mary and the flat before the baby is born. 

Sherlock had brought it up on occasion throughout the autumn, and did so again ten days before Christmas. It was late already, after eleven. They’d been sitting in their chairs, the fire dying down in the grate. John was absorbed in a mystery that he’d forbidden Sherlock to ruin in advance for him and Sherlock had been reading a book about apiology and commenting on its shortcomings every so often. After awhile, he’d looked over at John for a long moment without speaking. John had felt his eyes. 

“What?” he’d asked, not raising his eyes from the page. 

“John.” Sherlock’s voice was low, almost velvety. When he spoke like that, he could have said nearly anything and John would have done it. He’d sounded reluctant, though. 

He did look up then, at the warning note in Sherlock’s voice. “Yeah?” 

Sherlock’s eyes were an unusually dark blue in the low light. “You… know how much I’ve liked having you home,” he’d said slowly, almost haltingly. “But you know that you need to go back. It’s been five months already.”

The intimacy of his voice, the firelight, and his presence were all at war with his words and John felt himself drawing back just out of self-preservation. “Sherlock…” He’d trailed off. Somehow it felt like an attack and he felt defensive. “I know that. I’ve been thinking about it and I know I have to go.” He’d glanced at Sherlock’s face quickly, then looked away again. “I don’t want to go.”

Sherlock almost smiled; John had caught it out of the corner of his eye. “I know that,” was all he said, though. “But for your own safety. For your child. You have to go back.”

“If it weren’t for the child – ” John started, but Sherlock cut him off. 

“But there _is_ a child. And you’re married,” Sherlock had said, his tone suddenly almost harsh. “You love her. You miss her.”

“I don’t miss her!” John had snapped, hurt by the sudden coldness of Sherlock’s tone. 

“But you do love her.” Sherlock hadn’t missed the omission. He’d fixed John with his eyes, stern. “You have to go back. Do it soon. Christmas, perhaps. You’ll both be feeling sentimental; it’s as good a time as any to offer a grand, sweeping gesture of forgiveness.”

John had grit his teeth together. “I haven’t forgiven her. She hasn’t asked to _be_ forgiven.”

Sherlock waved this off. “Whatever. A grand, sweeping gesture of agreeing to go home to her, at least. Invite her along to my parents’ for dinner. Do it there. It will be neutral ground. I’ll keep Mycroft out of your way.”

John had swallowed them. “You really want me to go,” he’d said, risking a look at Sherlock, his voice low. So close to saying something more… 

But Sherlock had got his most stubborn look on and refused to be swayed off track. “Yes,” he said. “It’s for your own good, John.”

The _yes_ hurt more than anything else. John had nodded, hating both Mary and Sherlock at the moment, the rejection stinging. “I’m going to bed,” he’d said shortly, and taken himself off. He told himself that he wouldn’t cry, and if his eyes were dry as he angrily jerked himself off in bed that night, thinking of how short his remaining time at Baker Street was now, they didn’t stay dry as he came, trying not to think of Sherlock and failing miserably. His yearning for Sherlock was all the worse knowing that Sherlock didn’t want him, was sending him back to Mary. What would be the point in staying if Sherlock didn’t want him there, anyway? 

He hadn’t told Sherlock he was going to do it, but Sherlock knew, somehow. He withdrew a bit as the days approaching Christmas drew to a close. On Christmas morning, Sherlock’s phone had pinged with a message saying that the car Mycroft had sent was there. John had gone down the stairs first, then stopped with his hand on the door knob, suddenly unable to move. Sherlock had nearly run into him. “John – what are you – ”

“I can’t do it.” John’s teeth were clenched. “I can’t say those words.”

Sherlock knew immediately; he always knew. After a very small pause, he’d squeezed John’s shoulder and said with uncharacteristic gentleness, “Then say different words. You can. You must.”

John’s breath had caught in his throat, wanting so much to turn around and look Sherlock in the eye and ask, heart in his hands, if Sherlock really wanted him to go. 

But then Sherlock added, “I’ll have your things sent over.” Not even an invitation to come back and get them: he really wanted John out. 

So John had swallowed down something that felt like a mace in his throat and opened the door and ignored Sherlock all the way out to his parents’, which was easy enough with Mycroft in the car. 

And so he’d done it: said his prepared words in the Holmes’ cozy house, the house he’d have much preferred to see as Sherlock’s partner rather than married friend, there with his pregnant, assassin wife. He’d been surprised by how much bigger she was. And very nearly changed his mind when she decided to be snippy and martyred about his decision to finally break the five-month silence. He’d made himself do it, though, holding out through the prolonged hug and feeling conflicted about the fact that despite her belly, she still felt so familiar in his arms. It was jarring that anything about it felt comfortable, and he couldn’t seem to reconcile her tears with her cold-blooded, reptilian eyes the night of the confrontation. 

But he’d done it. Forgiven her. And then Sherlock shot Magnussen later that night. 

He has trust issues; he knows he does. Forgiveness doesn’t come particularly easily to him, and although he understood Sherlock’s reasons, it doesn’t change the fact that his decision meant taking himself out of John’s life forever. Perhaps out of his own, too, for that matter. And it was done without John’s knowledge, without his input – once again, he’d had absolutely no say over the entire thing, of losing Sherlock. He realises even now that Sherlock probably hadn’t planned it in advance, but still. That was the third time. First Moriarty had pinioned Sherlock into faking his own death, then Mary shot and very nearly killed him five months earlier, and this time it was Sherlock himself who did something so terrible that it meant being sent to Serbia. He’d said six months, but God only knew how long it would have really been if Mycroft hadn’t magicked up a false Moriarty return to get Sherlock out of it – and just in time, too. 

But John had been furious. He’d seen Sherlock just once in early January (crime scene) and Sherlock had been distant and admitted that the exile was to have been permanent and John had barely spoken to him for the rest of the crime scene, yet hated himself for having left it so terse and clipped when in truth, he was missing Sherlock so badly he felt he could hardly breathe most of the time. 

He lay awake thinking about him, willing himself not to dream of him and failing, heard his voice in his head, correcting the telly or making sarcastic little quips and deductions about the tiniest things around himself. It felt like a break-up, but worse than that, it felt like the loss of the very possibility. At least with a break-up he would have had the memories of having been loved by Sherlock, even if it had ended. He had his memories of the past five months, but it wasn’t enough. He felt as though he was dying of thirst, and Mary was the sea surrounding him with non-potable water. He knew very well that he didn’t love Mary any more, that he would never love anyone the way he loved Sherlock. But it was the honourable thing to do, to go home. “Home”. John couldn’t even bring himself to think of the flat as home. He felt like a ghost of himself, enduring Mary’s company and trying to fall asleep beside her, her very breathing bothering him. It was a painfully high cost to pay for his own honour: giving up the very dream of what had never happened with Sherlock. It was his own choice, he knows. He could have refused to go back to her. He could have taken the risk once and for all and told Sherlock how he felt, what he wanted, and damned his integrity to a thousand hells if it meant that he got Sherlock out of it. 

But he wasn’t that sort of man, even if five months had been pushing it, as far as honour is concerned. Then again, Mary _had_ shot his best friend. He thought that should offset his delay by quite a bit. And she still wasn’t the slightest bit sorry. 

With time, perhaps he could have started doing what he’d done before again, channelling his feelings and desire for Sherlock into Mary, working out his unspent arousal with her instead of with Sherlock. She would have very much liked that outlet, too, it seemed, but John simply wasn’t up to the task – quite literally. So he wanked in the relative privacy of the bathroom of the too-small flat and tried to keep himself quiet, effacing everything he really wanted in the name of being there for his pregnant wife and unborn child and tried to hide the fact that he was grieving intensely. He and Sherlock barely spoke any more and perhaps it was better that way, anyway, because it was too painful for John. He just needed time to get over it, lick his wounds in silence, and then perhaps one day down the road, he’d become a more convincing actor. 

But Mary had had to force it out of him, force herself on him, force his hand. He’d been dreaming of Sherlock. It was the morning of Christmas Day and John was standing at the door, unable to make himself move it, only this time, instead of speaking, Sherlock had put his arms around John’s shoulders from behind him and then suddenly they were both naked and Sherlock was hard against him, his erection driving slowly into John’s body, fucking him against the heavy front door of Baker Street, the fingers of their right hands intertwining against the dark paint while Sherlock’s left closed around John’s hand on his cock, both hands pumping along the length of his erection. He’d woken up gasping, thrusting up into his own fist, and Mary was awake, too. She’d reached over and slid her hand into his pyjama pants quick as a snake, the very night he’d refused her before they went to sleep, her fist tightening around his and helping him jerk himself off. He’d been half-asleep and too close to coming to tell her to go sod herself (it was humiliating enough that she was witnessing him getting himself off) and closed his eyes and let the dream fill his mind’s eye, trying to imagine that it was Sherlock’s hand over his. Her hand was too small but he was so close, anyway – he’d come, mercifully, but she’d ruined it. He’d pushed out of the bed and gone into the bathroom to clean himself up, feeling strangely sullied considering it was his own wife. It had been non-consensual, even if he hadn’t refused, and it made him angry. 

And then she’d found his stupid little sex toy, the one he’d be humiliated to admit that he can’t live without. He’d owned it for years and years and the sight of it in Mary’s hands had been upsetting, to say the least. She was playful on the surface but he could hear and see all of the machinations working as plain as day: she’d found his anal toy and was confronting him over it, “playfully” accusing him of being into anal stuff, either giving or receiving, which was nothing but a candy-coated accusation of being gay. He knows damned well that he’s bisexual, at least where Sherlock is concerned. He supposes that’s what one calls “interested in women with a massive and life-altering exception for Sherlock Holmes”, at any rate. And then she’d asked again, for sex, offering to disguise it as something she’d clearly thought would be more up his alley, the implied threat that if he hadn’t consented, he would have been all but confessing to homosexuality. So he’d agreed tersely, knowing that it would take all of his concentration just to stay hard, to turn off everything but the physical sensations. He wasn’t going to pretend it was Sherlock, but neither did he want to have any cognisant awareness that it was Mary, either. He’d sat in the sitting room for an hour while she was getting ready for bed, trying to steal himself mentally. He’d used his toy in the shower just to get himself hard, and when he was, he’d turned off the water, dried off quickly and gone into the bedroom. 

It was difficult anyway. Even turned away from him, Mary’s body was clearly still Mary’s body, and he felt only an active aversion to being in her, touching her, making love to her. To the person who had very nearly taken Sherlock from him again – but he’d tried not to think of Sherlock at all. He’d been brusque and unaffectionate – she’d forced this on him, and if she wasn’t happy about this, she had only herself and her manipulations to blame. He’d prepared her without lingering over it, doing only the medical minimum to loosen her sphincter, trying to block out the sounds of her voice. When he’d stopped himself asking her directly to be quiet and she’d asked him herself if he wanted her to, he’d felt sheepish acquiescing, the head of his cock within her, reluctant to go any further despite the welcome tightness around him, but then she’d ruined it. Pinpointed him with the one question she never, ever should have asked. 

“Are you trying to forget it’s me you’re with?” she’d asked, needles in her tone. 

He’d stiffened. “What?”

“You heard me,” she said pointedly.. 

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Surely she wasn’t really doing that, not after all that time of them having sex and turning a blind eye to the fact that Mary had stopped being the target of John’s arousal as of the night that Sherlock walked back into his life. 

But she was. “Exactly what it is,” Mary had said nastily. “I’m asking if you’re trying to imagine you’re with someone else. Someone who isn’t me. Seems obvious enough.” 

Her use of the word _obvious_ , using a Sherlock-ism like that, was clearly meant to stab deep and it had. He’d pulled out of her and turned away as though she’d burnt him physically, legs tumbling heavily over the side of the bed. He’d sat there, head bowed forward and suddenly it was all too much. He couldn’t do this. Would never be able to do this. He loved Sherlock and couldn’t pretend like this any more. It was just too much to ask and maybe it meant he had shit for honour but he couldn’t live out this lie. His cock was still hard, untouched and wanting, but the grief swelled over him like a wave and engulfed him, rising up his throat to choke him from within. 

“John, I’m – I’m sorry,” Mary had said after a bit in a different tone. “I wasn’t trying to imply anything. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Only she had: she’d implied everything; she might as well have said _We both know it’s Sherlock you want, and only Sherlock that you could ever do this with, and you’re not with him, are you? Instead you’re stuck here with me._ “No,” he’d said, hardly aware that his tongue was thick and heavy, his throat obstructed, his eyes stinging. “You shouldn’t.” He’d got up and made for the bathroom then, slamming the door, unable to stay in the room with her for another second. He’d taken one look at his miserable face in the mirror, at his cock standing bolt upright as though completely missing the problem, and he’d thought, _pathetic_. He was so pathetic. And this was as good as it was ever going to be. He’d started touching himself then anyway, still watching his own, tortured face in the mirror, watched himself crying and knowing that he would never be with Sherlock, that it was his own fault for ruining everything there just by doing exactly what Sherlock had told him and going back to Mary – and thereby closing off any chance that anything ever might have happened. But there’d been a chance before and now there never would be again. He watched himself and hated himself, hated Sherlock for sending him away, and hated Mary for all of it – for having lied to him, entrapped him in a marriage, entrapped him with a pregnancy, and then nearly killing the one person who meant more to him than anyone else had in his entire life. It was all so very fucked up. He’d cursed himself, coming and hating himself for it, hating that he couldn’t just forget and pretend, hating himself for loving Sherlock so much he’d have done anything to be with him, anything. He’d have killed Magnussen himself if it had meant getting to be with Sherlock at last. 

When the breakdown had spent itself, John found himself on the bathroom floor, face hot and sticky with tears, hands a mess from the unwanted, unwarranted orgasm, throat raw, heart and head aching. He thought of the gun in his desk drawer, then firmly made himself not think of it. No. Sherlock had saved him from that path once. He would just have to save himself this time. He had no idea what on earth he was to do about Mary but clearly the crisis point had just happened. He was in no state to try to think of some way to solve the impasse, not just then. 

He’d opened the door to the bedroom with great trepidation, then saw with relief that Mary had taken herself to the sofa. He’d locked the bedroom door from the inside and staggered into the bed, moving the pillows and sleeping across the foot of the bed, not wanting to sleep in the usual place. 

In the morning, she’d gone out already when he woke up, and when she came back, it was to confront him with separation papers. He’d been relieved, though she’d still dragged him through forcing out a confession. He’d never wanted to tell her, never wanted her to know. But finally, only after she’d made him scream with rage, he finally just said it. Made sure that she knew that, unlike what she thought, he hadn’t been in denial. He’d wanted her to know then that he’d known exactly what he wanted and given it up to go back to her. She’d retorted with something about how she should have shot Sherlock in the head and suddenly everything had been made easy. She wanted him to leave and he wanted nothing more than to leave. Perfect. 

The taxi to Baker Street had felt like ten years. He hadn’t called or texted to say he was coming, ask if he could. He’d meant to go in, treading cautiously, explain how things were and then ask if he could possibly stay for the rest of his life, but then he’d seen Sherlock, watching him ascend the stairs, and he’d let instinct take over. 

Best decision of his life. 

***

They’re leaning against each other, Sherlock still smiling. “I take it you’re here to stay?” he asks, his thumb touching John’s cheek, rubbing over it. 

“I’m never leaving again,” John promises, and Sherlock dips his head to kiss him again. It’s a fumbling sort of kiss, unpractised but full of intent and very, very sweet, nothing false about it whatsoever. John lets himself drown in it, still exhausted from the massive emotional break-down from the previous night. It feels like a century ago – the rest of his life will forever be divided by this moment, a landmark that towers over all of the others. And yet he still feels half-wrecked from last night, from relief, from a hunger for Sherlock that will never be completely sated. He wants everything at once, yet he can feel in the slight hesitation of Sherlock’s touch that this is very new for him. He kisses Sherlock again, again, giving him time to breathe in between, time to pull back if he wants to. 

After awhile, Sherlock lifts his head. “Do you want to come in?” he asks and John laughs; they’re still standing at the top of the stairs. 

“Yeah, all right,” he says, smiling up into Sherlock’s eyes. He’s still wearing his backpack and glances at his suitcase. “I’ll just…” He stops, realising he’s not sure where to put his things. 

Sherlock sidesteps it gracefully. “Just leave them out here for now. Come inside. Let’s talk.” 

John nods and takes off the backpack, setting it down beside the suitcase. He follows Sherlock to the kitchen table, feeling giddy and completely unsure as to how much is allowed now, how many barriers there will still be before he can speak directly from the heart, before he can touch Sherlock freely and tell him that he wants to be inside his very skin, wants Sherlock in his. It may be a little much just now. Tea seems like a safe option. The kettle is already boiling as though Sherlock knew he was coming. John goes and sits down at the table and watches Sherlock set about making tea, his eyes flicking over to John every so often as though he can’t quite believe John is still there. 

He puts the lid on the teapot and sits down across from John, steepling his fingers on the table. “So,” he says. “What happened? Why have you come home?”

John gives a helpless shrug, not knowing where to start. “I never should have left in the first place,” he says. “I knew I didn’t love her any more, but I thought I could fake it. At least give a half-decent impression of loving her for our kid’s sake, but there are some things you just can’t fake. I couldn’t hide that I was still incredibly angry with her, and – well, all of the stuff that goes with, you know, being married – ” He stops, slightly embarrassed. 

Sherlock understands immediately. “Ah,” he says carefully. “That… wasn’t working?”

“Not remotely. I couldn’t even make myself try. Except…” John finds heat coming into his face and wonders how much he should say. He decides to change course a bit, backing up. He looks up at Sherlock. “Let’s go back to the autumn, when I was staying here,” he says. “No, wait: let’s go back to the beginning. How long have you wanted – well, to kiss me, at least?” He’s not sure yet what he’s allowed to call it. 

Sherlock gives a little smile that’s rather sad. “Since before I jumped,” he says. “Though I don’t suppose it really hit me until that day. The previous night, while I was preparing for it. I didn’t know how to tell you and thought it safer not to, since I didn’t know how it was going to work, with Moriarty. There was a large chance that I wouldn’t survive. I knew you couldn’t come with me; Mycroft specifically said that I would be taking you closer to the danger, that the safest thing for you would be to let you believe me dead. I never meant it to take two years. But all that time.”

“All that time,” John echoes. Sherlock looks steadily into his eyes and nods. “Me too,” he says. “All that time. But you were gone.”

“I understand that,” Sherlock says. “And I knew that you wouldn’t leave her just because I had come back, though I hadn’t realised you felt the way I did.”

“Even all through the autumn, when I was back here?” John asks. 

Sherlock hesitates. “I had an idea,” he says reluctantly. “But Mycroft was particularly insistent that you should go back to Mary, partly so that someone was keeping tabs on her, and partly because he genuinely thought you would be better off there. And I admit, I thought you wanted things to be all right between the two of you. You love her.”

John shakes his head. “No. Not any more.”

Sherlock smiles again but doesn’t say anything. Waiting for John to say more, perhaps. (Always a mistake to theorise without having all of the relevant data. John can hear him saying it out loud.) 

So he goes on. “Besides,” he adds, feeling braver about admitting now, “I had always loved you, you know. After you came back, I kept telling myself that I should just be feeling lucky to have you again, that I had my best friend and my fiancée and that that was all I wanted or needed. Or at least that I could make do. And I was, I was making it work. But – you know, after a crime scene, all those times when I said I had to get home – it was only because I was afraid to trust myself alone with you in private. I didn’t know what I might do. So I would go home and try to channel it all into Mary.”

Sherlock absorbs this, his eyes turning green in the lamplight. “When you say channel it into – ”

“I mean that I would go home and just about fuck her blind,” John says bluntly, crudely. “Sometimes I was already hard when I walked in the door. I tried not to think of you. I tried not to think of anyone, just focused on getting off and nothing else.”

Sherlock swallows and seems to have a bit of trouble wording his response. “I… I hadn’t realised,” he says, blinking rapidly. Processing, then, John knows. He picks up his teacup with a none-too-steady hand and takes a sip of his tea. “But it was working for you?”

“Sort of, if you don’t consider that it was never exactly what I wanted,” John points out. “It was always a compromise. And I was always afraid of what I might say or do at the wrong moment. And all through the autumn when I was back here, I kept thinking that maybe it would just… happen sometime.”

Sherlock looks at his hands around his cup. “I wanted it to,” he says, as though making an admission. “But I knew that you were struggling to forgive Mary already and I didn’t want to make your decision more difficult. Nor was I certain that you… wanted that.”

“God, yes,” John says, exhaling heavily. “I used to imagine scenario after scenario where it might happen – different places around the flat, various things you or I would say that would finally tip it forward – but I didn’t know about you, either, and I was too worried about doing something you would hate, or just realising that you weren’t interested in me that way at all and that I would ruin everything, and you’re much too important to me for that.”

“Oh, John,” Sherlock said, shaking his head. He turns slightly on his chair and crosses one knee over the other. Gazing at the floor a metre or two in front of him, he clears his throat. “What would happen in these scenarios?”

His cheeks are a bit flushed, John realises, and the thought warms him from head to toe. If Sherlock is asking – “Er, it changed all the time,” he says, partly unable to believe that he’s actually about to detail one of his vivid sexual fantasies about Sherlock _to_ Sherlock. “Maybe we would be in our chairs one night and we’d have been drinking a little and one of us would just lean too far over and the next thing we knew, we’d be kissing. I’d be straddling your lap and maybe reaching into your trousers to rub us together. Or you’d be at the desk and I’d be on the sofa watching telly and you would just come over and lie down across my lap, or on top of me if I was stretched out. Or we’d be in your bedroom, full-on going at it, one of us bending the other over and reaming him until we were both shouting from the pleasure.”

Sherlock’s cheeks are definitely flushed, the colour seeping down his neck and into his collar. John has never seen him actually blush before. He’ll freely admit he’d always thought Sherlock far too shameless to be capable of blushing, but here he is, red and hot in the face. It’s both endearing and arousing, as is talking about it like this. “How would it start, though?” Sherlock asks, stealing a sidelong look at him. “The first time?”

“You would always kiss me,” John says. “Or I would kiss you, and before we knew it, we’d be touching each other. God, I want to touch you so badly, you know – I’ve had so many sex dreams about you, it’s embarrassing. Mary even knew that I was having them, and she probably knew that they weren’t about her. Even before she shot you. I’d wake up jerking off, trying to keep her from knowing about it and the whole time all I could think of was you, your mouth, your hands, your body – I’ve wanted you for so long – ” 

Sherlock manages to get out of his chair and around the table all in one motion, his long legs astride John’s lap and he’s kissing John again with much more fervour and no hesitation whatsoever this time. John wastes no time getting his hands on him, rubbing over his back and down to his arse, arching up against Sherlock, their torsos touching all down their fronts. Sherlock is already rocking against him, mouth hungry on John’s and John suddenly has a glimpse of _how_ much Sherlock has been holding this back – all for his sake. There is way too much clothing between them but the friction is gathering and starting to feel really good, an ache low in John’s pelvis growing and demanding more and more contact. Sherlock is making small noises in the back of his throat, aroused and desperate and John is hopelessly lost. His chair begins to tip back toward the counter and Sherlock puts an arm out to brace them, the chair balancing on its two back legs as they rut together, panting into each other’s mouths.

John manages to wedge a hand between them, causing Sherlock to halt the delectable rhythm they’d been building, but he gets Sherlock’s trousers unbuttoned and unzipped and when Sherlock realises what he’s doing, he used the hand not keeping them from falling backwards to do the same to John. It’s a bit of a fumble but then their cocks are together in John’s hand and Sherlock closes his around them both, too, and they resume. Sherlock’s cock is already leaking a lot, and it lends just enough slickness to make the slide feel better than anything John’s ever felt before. His hand is too small to really get a satisfactory grip on both of them, but Sherlock’s hand is curled around his and makes up the difference. They stroke themselves together, Sherlock still thrusting against him and they find a rhythm again. John’s mouth is hovering over Sherlock’s, open and breathing hard and Sherlock is starting to make the same face he makes when he’s being obstinate about something, his lower lip pushing upward, almost frowning, his brow furrowed, but as he gets closer, the expression changes to one of helplessness, pleading, and then he’s saying it, _Please_ and _John_ and _God, please_ and the words wrap themselves around John’s flesh and tighten. “Yes – oh God, fuck, yes – Sh – ah!” He can’t finish the word; he’s coming, the warm gush of it flooding over his hand as Sherlock begins to thrust frantically against him, the slide of his cock the most erotic thing John’s felt, and he’s still coming hard. Sherlock presses his forehead into John’s and makes a choked sound in his throat and then a spasm wracks his entire body, his legs wrapping around John and the back of the chair both as he cries out and goes rigid, come spurting from his cock so hard it catches John in the throat, then his shirt and neck again. He gives a push off the counter, letting the chair drop back down onto all four legs and takes his hand off their joint cocks, putting both arms around John and kissing him again, hard, despite the fact that they’re both panting. John is still practically seeing stars from his orgasm and marvels at the fact that Sherlock was even able to keep them upright all that while. 

As they recover, Sherlock bends his head to lick at John’s throat, cleaning him up and John closes his eyes, tilts his head back, and revels in it. He has a lapful of long-limbed detective, he’s just had a _superb_ orgasm, and Sherlock is kissing him and lavishing the exact sort of sentimental behaviour on him that John had always told himself would never happen even if they did, by some miracle, manage to start having sex one day. It’s absolutely incredible. In the space of twenty-hours, he’s gone from thinking that their friendship was basically dying to _this_. “I love you,” he says, even though he said it earlier, just stating the fact of it. “You mad bastard. I love you.”

Sherlock’s lips close around his earlobe, sucking gently. He makes a sound of resonant agreement, humming into John’s ear. “It’s quite mutual.”

“I was starting to get that, yeah,” John says, smiling to himself, since Sherlock can’t see it. He gets into fingers into Sherlock’s curls and kisses the top of his head. Sherlock lifts his face and kisses him on the mouth again. It goes on until Sherlock’s weight becomes rather heavy. By joint agreement they get up and sort themselves out, then move to the sofa, sprawling together in a tangle of limbs that couldn’t have been more perfect if it had come straight from one of John’s daydreams. 

“You’re sure about this?” Sherlock asks after a bit, breaking the contented silence. John is sitting half on him, legs draped over him and dangling over the side of the sofa. Sherlock’s fingers are in his hair and it’s mesmerising. 

“Yes. Positive. Besides, I signed a separation petition this morning. It’s done. I’m out. You needn’t worry that I’ll change my mind and leave. You only just barely got me to go last time.”

Sherlock makes a pleased sound at this into John’s temple, then kisses it. “Good. But you don’t feel – conflicted, at all?”

John goes quiet, thinking, then says, “No. Not really. There’s the child, but we’ll work something out. Mary wants full custody, anyway, and that’s what it said in the petition. She got it written this morning and brought it home.” Sometime he’ll tell Sherlock about the confrontation over the toy, the failed attempt at anal sex with Mary, the fight in the kitchen. Not now. He doesn’t even want to talk about her for now. This moment belongs to them and God knows they’ve both waited for it long enough. He hesitates, then tries to put it into words. “Let’s not talk about it now,” he says, his mouth brushing over Sherlock’s as he speaks. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise you that. And maybe my word of honour doesn’t mean much any more – but all I can tell you is that I’m yours, for good. Whether or not you want me.”

“I want you,” Sherlock says, and kisses him, twice, three times. Then after, “I’ll always want you.”

John opens his eyes to find Sherlock’s. “Then you’ll always have me,” he says, and that’s a promise, too. 

And Sherlock smiles again. “Good,” he says, and for now, that’s all he needs to say. Because now it doesn’t matter what happens with Mary or any of the rest of it. Whatever comes next, they will face it together, as they should have all along. No more being fractured, no more compromises. From here on in, it’s this: the other side of the landmark. The rest of their lives. Because John is home at last. 

*


End file.
